Yesterday we posted an article concerning the discovery of alternative builds on GSM Galaxy Nexus Phones. Google’s own build for the Galaxy Nexus is named “yakju,” however some owners who were not receiving updates for their device discovered the problem lay in the fact that their phone sported a different fingerprint, “yakjuwx.” Android software engineer Jean-Baptise Queru, shed some light on the information, declaring that yakjuwx and yet another alternative build yakjusc are from Samsung, not Google. While the experience is largely the same between the versions, only Google’s yakju build is guranteed updates as they happen. Samsung will presumably distribute the updates to their modified build at unknown time intervals. Not having to wait on updates is one of the major draws of the Nexus brand, so it comes as no surprise that many, discovering they had the yakjuwx build, were a bit disappointed. Others, however, turned their gaze to the impending release of the Galaxy Nexus on Verizon. Would it be receiving updates through Google, Samsung, or shudder Verizon?

It appears that those of us waiting to purchase the Verizon version can all take a big sigh of relief today, as JBQ has chimed in once more on the situation. He writes,

After reviewing the situation, Google concluded that the only Galaxy Nexus that can be supported in AOSP are the ones that are originally sold with a “yakju” or “mysid” system.

yakju is one of the GSM/CDMA+ variants, while mysid is indeed the CDMA/LTE variant for VZW.

There you have it folks. Verizon Galaxy Nexus gets its updates through Google. Rest a little easier, until our next startling discovery…

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, a phone which should stand as the epitome of a pure Google Experience device, has been receiving a lot of flak lately for inclusion of bloatware and exclusion of Google Wallet, at least in the Verizon version. That being the case, many have resorted to obtaining a purer version elsewhere, purchasing the GSM counterpart for use on alternative networks. As it turns out the GSM version may have its fair share of problems as well, besides the volume bug. One of the key aspects of a Nexus device is the fact that it is updated before any other devices, and the updates come to you straight from Google immediately thereafter they release them. As expected, Google pushed out update 4.0.1 and people started receiving it without missing a beat, some people that is. A buzz began when select XDA community members realized they had failed to receive the 4.0.1 update. Many of them anything but new to Android took matters into their own hands and decided to flash the update to their devices manually using the Google provided update zip file. They subsequently found that they could not manually install either.

It’s a work in progress and a pleasure watching it in the making as ICS comes to the Droid Razr. The folks over at RootzWiki managed to successfully boot Ice Cream Sandwich on the device. They’ve dedicated this a whole thread to keeping you up to date in what’s working, what’s not working, all features, news, pics and videos of the port. And if you can get through a ton of heavy metal music and bad viewing angles, check out the video of the new OS on the Razr and don’t forget to let us know what you think of it.

The other day we told you about the CyanogenMod team bringing CM7 to the Kindle Fire. Well as of today you can too. However, this is a lengthy process (43 steps and use of ADB) and I suggest taking extreme caution by reading through the entire guide before you take on this task. According to the post, this is still an alpha build and some stuff doesn’t work. We reported before that the wifi wasn’t working, but both that and the touchscreen are working just fine. The sound and hardware acceleration aren’t working however. According to the post:

“- First, this method will require some knowledge of ADB. - This version is very much an alpha build, and as such there are features that are not yet working, though most of the important stuff is. - Wifi and touchscreen controls are reported to work just fine, however sound and hardware acceleration are not. - This has been tested with firmware versions 6.0 and 6.1, but not on 6.2. - In addition, there is no way (currently) to return to the stock software. - There are likely other issues as well, but if you’re willing to test it then proceed.”

So, those of you that are interested in trying this out, I still, advise extreme caution in flashing this, and like with rooting and flashing on other devices, it does void your warranty. If you haven’t rooted your Kindle Fire yet and want to, you can go here. There is no way to get back to the Stock software as of yet, so again, extreme caution advised, have I stressed this enough yet?

If this doesn’t deter you from trying this out, hit the break below to download the files and for the install process. Those of you that successfully flash this, we would love to hear from you. How well does it work? Read more

Good news for those with rooted Bionics. A somewhat functional, alpha build of Ice Cream Sandwich has been released for the Bionic thanks to dhacker29 of the Th3ORY ROM team. Not everything works as of right now, so using this as a daily driver is probably not a good idea. Here is what works:

However, wifi and phone data aren’t working and the developer still needs to get the internal SD card to mount. This should happen sooner rather than later though.

If you are interested in trying this out, you need to make sure your Bionic is rooted, which you can do by going here. Keep in mind that this is an alpha build and is intended for preview purposes only. As always, what happens when flash the ROM is your responsibility. If that doesn’t deter you, hit the break below to download the ROM or view the source for more details. Read more

Chomping at the bit for some Ice Cream Sandwich action brought to you by CM9? Then you’re in luck, sort of. The developers of CyanogenMod released an update to their blog showing progress for CM9. As they say things are “slowly starting to come together.” I think however, that given they got the source code a little over two weeks ago, they are moving along pretty well. They have a number of devices running CM9 and they are focusing on getting it on more devices. OMAP4, MSM8660/7×30 and Exynos devices will most likely be the first ones ready for this ROM. Tablets are being shown some love too as both the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Asus Transformer are in the “pipeline” early.

Older devices will be seeing CM 9 as well. As the blog put it:

“Our goal is to provide continued support to all CM7 devices back to the QSD8250 series of devices such as the Nexus One. I don’t want to make any promises at this time, but that is the plan.”

Bad news for those of you with the original Droid. CM9 will not be seen on your device. As the CyanogenMod puts it, “time to upgrade.” Given that the Android framework has had some major changes the CyanogenMod team has had trouble with compatibility with older proprietary camera and graphics drivers, but, they are pretty confident that they will be able to overcome these issues like they have in the past. The CM team has also created a solution to CM7‘s long spin-up time by adding new devices on-demand which saves bandwidth and avoids long start-up time. Read more

Good news for you owners of the Galaxy Nexus. The Android Building Google Groups page put up an announcement stating that a complete factory image for your Galaxy Nexus has been released. This image includes the bootloader, baseband, and the rest of the system. As we all know, Google phones have always been easy to root and the Galaxy Nexus continues this tradition. This factory image will restore your phone back to its factory state should you mess it up. If you are interested you can un-archive the package and check out all of the files individually, however, there is a “flash-all” script that has been added so that flashing to the factory state is easy to do.

“hopefully this’ll be useful to people flashing custom AOSP builds, as it provides a clean supported way to return to factory state.”

Those of you who are interested in flashing your phone, you can head to the link below the break to get your image. If you haven’t rooted your phone yet and are interested in doing so, you can go here. This is certainly good news for the Android community. What about you guys? Does this help you breathe a little bit easier? Read more

The race is on, that is, to see how many different devices can we port ICS to in the least amount of time. Next to make the ICS port list is the seemingly forgotten Samsung Fascinate. The device was recently graced with the “Alphalulz” ICS build courtesy of the folks over at RootzWiki, primarily dev JT1134. Working features include 3G call quality, WiFi functionality and the camera. The build is definitely being touted as good enough to be your daily driver. Want to give it a try? Remember that you’re doing this at your own risk. That being said, you can hit the source link for all of the download instructions. Good luck and have fun with this.

We didn’t think it would take too long before the creators of CyanogenMod got………creative. Since the Android 4.0 source code release, the team has been hard at work and now we’re seeing the blood sweat and tears begin to manifest into fruition. Early alpha builds of CyanogenMod9 for the Samsung Galaxy S and the Nexus S are surfacing and certainly showing some promise. The build is doing well so far per Koushik Dutta, CM9′s initial developer. He also states that as the build is performing well, it’s stable enough to become a “daily driver-type ROM”. Video playback and MMS are experiencing some issues but otherwise it’s still a good build for Nexus S.

In regards to the Galaxy S, a beta version of CM9 made its way to the folks over at XDA and you can download it now to try. The ROM is being touted as “functional” with the exception of some minor but important issues. For instance, the Galaxy S version has been known to completely wipe users’ SD cards. So keep in mind you’re attempting this at your own risk. If you’re still interested in giving it a go, you can head on over to XDA via the source thread and try your luck. Good luck and don’t forget to report back on how well the builds are working on your respective devices.

HTC, one of the hottest handset manufacturers in the word has just announced the availability of source code for several of its popular handsets. Among these are the HTC Amaze, Rezound, Explorer and Desire S. You now download the kernel source code by heading over to HTC’s Dev site. Here’s to hoping the wide array of developers get on board and do what they do best which is checking out what’s under the hood, extracting some goodies and tidbits and of course, producing some awesome and useful custom ROMs for the masses.